A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

[146] It is not easy to make out the details of the fighting. After the battle of September 19, the two armies were said to be only about half a mile distant from each other, but on October 7, according to Burgoyne’s dispatch, after advancing for some time he formed his troops within three-quarters of a mile of the enemy. The advance was apparently not direct but diagonal against the extreme left of the Americans. The main English camp near the river, where there was a bridge of boats, does not seem to have been at all molested, though it was presumably drawn back in the following night. Breyman’s camp which was stormed is shown on the plan appended to the State of the Expedition from Canada, as well in the rear of the extreme right of the English line.

[147] Horace Walpole, writing to the Countess of Upper Ossory on November 3, 1777, seems to be referring to reports of the battle at Freeman’s Farm. ‘If your angel would be seeing, why did he not put on his spectacles and hover over Arnold, who has beaten the vapouring Burgoyne and destroyed his magazines? Carleton, who was set aside for General Hurlothrumbo, is gone to save him and the remains of his army if he can.’ On November 13 he writes to the same, ‘General Swagger is said to be entrenched at Saratoga, but I question whether he will be left at leisure to continue his Commentaries: one Arnold is mighty apt to interrupt him.’ Authentic news of Burgoyne’s surrender did not reach England till December 1. Writing to Sir Horace Mann on December 4, Walpole says: ‘On Tuesday night came news from Carleton at Quebec, which indeed had come from France earlier, announcing the total annihilation (as to America) of Burgoyne’s army.... Burgoyne is said to be wounded in three places, his vanquisher, Arnold, is supposed to be dead of his wounds.’ It will be noted that Arnold is made the hero on the American side, and that there is no mention of Walpole’s godson, Gates. Walpole contemplated invasion of Canada and possible loss of Quebec as the result of the disaster.

[148] The above account has been taken almost entirely from the original dispatches, documents, and evidence published in A State of the Expedition from Canada as laid before the House of Commons by Lieutenant-General Burgoyne. London, 1780. Burgoyne, in a private letter to Howe of 20th October, attributed the surrender in part to the fact that his troops were not all British. See Report on American Manuscripts in the Royal Institution (1904), vol. i, p. 140.

[149] Article 6 of the Treaty of Paris between France and the United States, dated February 6, 1778, ran as follows: ‘The most Christian King renounces for ever the possession of the islands of Bermudas as well as of any part of the continent of America which before the Treaty of Paris in 1763 or in virtue of that treaty were acknowledged to belong to the Crown of Great Britain or to the United States heretofore called British colonies or which are at this time or have lately been under the Power of the King and Crown of Great Britain.’ (Annual Register, 1778, p. 341.)

[150] Stone’s Life of Brant, and among recent books, Halsey’s Old New York Frontier, give good accounts of this border war from the American side. Fortunately the subject lies in the main outside the scope of the present book. It would probably be fair to say that there were undoubtedly great and horrible barbarities, not confined to one side only, and on the other hand that there was much exaggeration as, e.g. when Campbell in Gertrude of Wyoming made Joseph Brant, who never took any part at all in the raid, one of the monsters of the story.

The Wyoming valley had been colonized from Connecticut and was claimed by and at the time actually incorporated with Connecticut, though geographically within the state of Pennsylvania. The settlers had sent a considerable contingent to Washington’s army and their homes were in consequence but slenderly guarded.

On Pownall’s ‘map of the Middle British Colonies in North America’, published March 25, 1776, on the western side of the east branch of the Susquehanna river, appears the following: ‘Colony from Wioming Connecticut.’

In the ‘Topographical Description’ attached to the above map there is the following note at pp. 35-6: ‘This Place and the District is now settled by a populous Colony, which swarmed and came forth from Connecticut. The People of Connecticut say, that their Charter and the grant of Lands under it was prior to that of Pennsylvania; that the grant of Lands to them extended within the Latitudes of their Grant (except where possessed by other powers at that Time) to the South Seas. They allow New York and New Jersey to have been so possessed at the time of their Grant, but say, that their right emerges again at the West boundary of those Provinces. Mr. Penn and the People of Pennsylvania who have taken Grants under him say, that this District is in the very Heart of the Province of Pennsylvania. On this State of Claims the Two Colonies are in actual war, which they have not even remitted against each other here, although united in arms against Great Britain 1775.’

The note is interesting as showing how very far from amicable were the relations of the colonies to each other when the War of Independence broke out, cf. the case of the Vermont settlers and New York referred to at the beginning of this chapter.

[151] This is the date given on p. 10 of Sir Frederick Haldimand, by Jean N. McIlwraith in the ‘Makers of Canada’ series. The notice in the Dictionary of National Biography gives the date as 1756. The life states that Haldimand as a young man possibly took service with the King of Sardinia, and certainly served under Frederick the Great. The Dictionary of National Biography states that there is no record of his having been in the Prussian army.